One of the biggest frustrations with getting into AI, is understanding the basic algorithms. As most information sources out there expect you to already understand them. Inspired by my own struggles in AI, I gave an interactive demo explaining the A Star (*) Pathfinding Algorithm from the ground up.

When editing text in HTML5’s contenteditable attribute you probably need to have all of your content wrapped with <p> or <div> tags like so.

<p>My text</p>
<p>Another line of text</p>

The problem is if you do the following it will screw up your block formatting and dump in empty lines of text. Which is nasty formatting you don’t want and the cursor placement will start wacking out in your contenteditable area.

I take character development very seriously and love using anagrams. Problem is they are a pain to create without spending several hours combing through dictionaries, rewording names, and researching dead languages nobody speaks. I looked around for a free anagram research tool, but they were terrible (or for scrabble). Realizing I could write something to speed up my name research process, I created the JavaScript Anagram Generator app.

Building a video game in the wild west of HTML5 programming is no easy task. I’ve had many difficult problems with my HTML5 game A Dragon Named Coal through Clever Crow Games. How do you build a game CMS, distribute to several systems quickly, and find the resources you need to keep moving forward. Being involved in San Francisco’s Meetup.com scene I’ve met several other HTML5 game developers struggling with the same issues. To try and help unite these developers to create better games, I’ve started the San Francisco HTML5 Game Developers Meetup group.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I’m launching a game development company. I’m happy to announce that Clever Crow Games is officially live and running. We’re planning on updating the site’s development journal on a weekly basis with our progress.